USA Rugby Finally Launches New Website

After months (and months) of waiting, USA Rugby launched their redesigned website this past week and got a collective… “meh” from their membership.

Touting an improved on-line experience and simplified navigation, the site is without a doubt much better to look at and is a marked improvement stylistically from its predecessor.

According to Nigel Melville, USA Rugby’s CEO and President of Rugby Operations, the site is “a huge step in the right direction. It will provide our members with a top-class source of news and information.”

The biggest improvement overall is the load-time on the site. The previous rendition of the USA Rugby website was painstakingly slow and cumbersome at its very best and down right maddening at its worst. While the new site still provides much clicking to work your way to the information you need, it does it at a much faster clip.

USA Rugby heralds the launch of the site as the dawn of a new era of digital communications at USA Rugby. With a growing social media presence, the organization aims to actively engage its members, fans, and potential supporters.

“We are thrilled with the new site,” said USA Rugby’s Communications Manager, Jarrod Beckstrom. “It will better serve our members and the American rugby community at large. With the explosive growth that rugby is experiencing, we needed to have a website that is highly functional, relevant, and exciting for the user. We’re confident that the new site is all of those things and more.”

The site was delivered nearly six months behind schedule, but there’s no need to beat that dead horse anymore. All we can do is move forward and in that sense, the new USA Rugby website provides a much better display for rugby in America.

Something as insignificant as a cleaned up look to the site may not mean much to the veteran rugby player who has seen 3-4 skins on pretty much that same content. But for youth and high schoolers checking out the site for the first time, the new USA Rugby website is a better advertisement for the sport.

I’m still sad that they didn’t create the all-encompassing user driven scoreboard system. I wasn’t expecting one, but it sure would have been nice.

I’d also like to see some good quality highlight videos of the men and women’s national teams (both 7’s and 15’s) placed in a very accessible place.